The student was of African-American descent.
A bizarre
• Facial analysis serves as a springboard for deftly
broadening the scope of the subject. Algorithms, data
science, machine learning, and so-called artificial
intelligence, all of which are doing the bidding of
programmers, engineers, and billionaires who are passing
on their conscious and unconscious biases, are
highlighted in Coded Bias. As a result, we have a bright
new world of machines that resembles the past's racist
and sexist power systems.
• Today's innovation is dependent on judgments made not
just by those currently working in the area, but also by
those who set the groundwork and brought us to where
we are now, steered deliberately or unknowingly by their
own beliefs about what science should be and who it
should serve.
• There is a noticeable continuity between who was in
power then and who is in charge now, from yesterday's
(mainly white, largely male) thinkers to today's (mostly
white, mostly male) tech billionaires. As Buolamwini
puts it, "data is a reflection of our history." "Our
algorithms house the ghosts of the past.“
• Major take away from Coded Bias, is that it's time to
• The video joins activist organisation Big Brother Watch
on the camera-encrusted streets of London, where they
are launching high-level legal challenges against mass
monitoring and pounding the sidewalk assisting passers-
by who have been arrested by police after a hidden
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camera pointed them out. When a facial analysis system
misidentified a schoolboy, a gang of un-uniformed
officers hauled him off a crowded street.
altercation occurs in another scenario, in which cops punish a
man for covering his face while passing a facial recognition
camera. Even if the technology were accurate in detecting
suspects which it isn’t law enforcement officials are plainly
utilizing it to label certain behaviors as suspicious, irritate
them, and then impose punishment.
• If facial analysis can't reliably distinguish Black faces, and
machine learning can't detect human biases in the data that
feeds it, then technology clearly has no place wielding such
massive power over individuals.
• Coded Bias is an important warning, but it's not meant to
make one feel hopeless as one return to doom-scrolling on
ones smartphone. Buolamwini personifies optimism as the
founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, a campaign
group dedicated to combating unfairness in decision-
making algorithms. Throughout the film, she and the
filmmakers seek out and join forces with other activists,
many of whom are Black and women, who are chipping
away at hidden monoliths of control in places like
apartment blocks, hair salons, and MIT labs, as well as in
the halls of power
confront it. We didn't read the terms and conditions and
opted into an unimaginably large monitoring project
managed by a handful of profit-driven firms, billionaires,
and states in which democratically elected lawmakers and
the people themselves are steps behind. However,
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Buolamwini and a global coalition of campaigners have
already influenced genuine change, governments grapple
with the repercussions.